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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24543982">15-1</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/forest_roses/pseuds/forest_roses'>forest_roses</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>give me your gravity, there is none here [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wolf 359 (Radio)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Always, Asexual Kepler, Canon-Typical Violence, Demisexual Jacobi, Disassociation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Trans Daniel Jacobi, does this count as a character study, i will make this a common tag, idk but it took me a month to write, it is how I view and write the characters even if it isn’t explicitly stated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:28:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,507</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24543982</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/forest_roses/pseuds/forest_roses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, this thing between the two of you seems so close to comfortable. It's strange, the odd domesticity of it, as he washes his hands at the tiny sink and you wait outside in the little rectangle of light shining onto the carpet from the open door, the quiet sound of the water humming in the background.</p><p>It'd almost be normal, you think, if he wasn't cleaning your blood off his fingers.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>give me your gravity, there is none here [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706251</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>15-1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is named after 15-1 by The Mountain Goats. It’s my favorite song by them and I would highly recommend it. When I started writing this, all I had was an idea for a scene where they were driving down the highway together. Overall, this fanfiction took me a month to write, at first because I struggle more with writing Jacobi since he experiences actual emotion, and then because of everything going on in the world right now. I’m not sure that it came out as good as I wanted it to, but I’m proud of it nonetheless.</p><p>Please stay safe and donate to organizations for BLM. If you can protest, please do and make sure to be prepared for it possibly turning violent, just in case. Thank you.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sometimes, this thing between the two of you seems so close to comfortable. It's strange, the odd domesticity of it, as he washes his hands at the tiny sink and you wait outside in the little rectangle of light shining onto the carpet from the open door, the quiet sound of the water humming in the background.</p><p>It'd almost be normal, you think, if he wasn't cleaning your blood off his fingers.</p><p>Your own hands are clean now, though there are flakes of dirt and pine needles stuck under your nails and you doubt they'll be easy to get rid of. Your clothes appear ordinary, despite the fact if anyone took a close look, they'd notice several darkened red spots on your jeans, and see the way you have your hands in your jacket pockets, holding it closed to hide the stain spreading over the collar of your t-shirt. Kepler looks better; he thought to bring an extra jacket, and his old one is burning somewhere in the forest, next to the ashen remains of the poor fool who tried to fight him. By the time you two have left town, the fire will be gone, as will any sign of your presence.</p><p>Goddard trains its employees well.</p><p>The juxtaposition of this calm moment against the memory of his fingers on the gun only a few hours ago should probably have some effect on you. It doesn’t. Perhaps you are still a little off balance from how quickly he turned his eyes to you, gauging your injuries even as the corpse was falling to the ground next to you.</p><p>Kepler’s standing in the doorway now, his signature half-smirk on his face. You’re not sure how long he’s been there. Long enough that you can’t pretend you weren’t thinking about him, at least. He crosses the room and stands in front of the closed curtains, the slit of light between them mixing with the bedside lamp while he pulls out a small first aid kit and a needle and thread from the bag sitting on the bed.</p><p>His hands are soft as they trace the cut on your neck; his eyes are similarly soft while he strokes a wet cloth across the wound, and you wince a little at the sting, but you’re mostly just there, your fingers curled around the edge of the mattress, not thinking of anything much at all. It used to bother you, the way you just seem to drift away sometimes, but you don’t mind as much right now. Progress is never linear, but you’ve learned to trust yourself more in the last few years; you’ve learned that sometimes drifting away is all you can do, and it sounds strange but somehow you trust Kepler enough not to hurt you when you’re like this. You shouldn’t trust him, but you’ve never been good at resisting things you should avoid. You’re too attracted to danger, and he is certainly dangerous, and you get the feeling that the both of you could take down the world if you really wanted to.</p><p>Ambition has never really been your thing, though. You tend to stand back and let him have the control of the situation; obey his commands with just the right amount of mutiny to still be yourself. You’ve had enough choices for a lifetime, and the only one you’re making now is continuing to follow him. Still, something smolders in the background: whiskey and woodsmoke, a fire on the edge of existence, waiting to burn everything around you and the two of you along with it.</p><p>It would have torn things apart long ago, but Kepler does not explode like you do. You burn hot and bright and fast; he works coolly and without strong emotion, he is efficient and while he takes pleasure in causing pain, it never distracts him from the job at hand.</p><p>Perhaps that is why you feel so unsure, looking at him now, unable to connect this collected man in front of you with the vision of him only a few hours ago, the slight surprise and emotion in his eyes as a man points a gun at your head.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>You’ve done this a thousand times. The two of you know how this goes; there’s a procedure for this kind of thing: get from point A to point B without being followed, find the intel, destroy the building and leave no survivors, report back to Goddard in the morning and be rewarded with Cutter’s bone-chilling smile when Kepler hands him the information.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Except this time, there was a survivor.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It happened so quickly; you’re honestly not sure if it was real or some hallucination your addled brain fed you to keep you calm, but you doubt you’d be able to imagine the look in Kepler’s eyes when the man came out of the trees and grabbed hold of you, aiming his pistol at your head. The look of shock that quickly faded to anger, and you remember thinking that the poor man holding you had no idea what was coming to him. You almost pitied him, until you heard the crack of a rib and the gunshot, and you looked down to see the corpse and up to see Kepler, and you decided that no, you rather believed he had it coming.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Kepler stepped closer to you and held a hand up against your neck; you felt a stab of pain and when he pulled his hand away it was wet with blood, and oh, that’s why you were so dizzy. He bent down and tore off a strip from the man’s shirt, held it to the wound, and when you took it he nodded and stepped away to clean up the scene.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It wasn’t enough blood to truly threaten your life, but it certainly wasn’t ideal, and Kepler took a little longer than usual helping you into the car and checking the wound for any signs of a more serious injury. You were pretty sure you had a bruise starting on your side where the man punched you, and one of your legs felt a little more unstable than strictly necessary, but you knew you’d be fine. You didn’t say anything, though, because it’s rare for him to show any kind of concern for you, and despite the less-than-ideal reason, you didn’t particularly want him to stop.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When you got back to the hotel, he checked the wound again and took you to the sink to get a new cloth and clean the cut. You were a little less dizzy; you had made sure to drink water and keep pressure on your neck on the way back. Like you’d said, both of you had done this a thousand times before.</em>
</p><hr/><p>You come back to yourself in pieces, and he is in the bathroom rinsing the cloth when you blink your eyes open again and stretch, cautiously checking for any internal pain. The bruise on your side aches a little in protest, but you’re alright. There is a new line of stitches on the side of your neck, and a patch on your right hand where you burned it when you were too close to the building as the charges detonated. You’ve had much worse.</p><p>Kepler is leaning against the door frame again, watching you with slightly raised eyebrows and a small smirk. You stand up and he hands you your bag, and together the two of you walk out to the car, synchronized without speaking. The seat belt rubs a little at your stitches, and you slump farther down in the passenger seat to get it away from the cut. Kepler starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot, and you leave the town behind with no evidence of your presence except a page in the hotel check-in records, which is in your bag waiting to be disposed of once you’ve gone a large enough distance.</p><p>Typically, this car ride is punctuated by sarcastic remarks from you or his comments on your performance in the job. Sometimes he’ll even say something approving, or tell you one of his myriad stories about the time he killed seventy people in the Grand Canyon or the mission where he met Abraham Lincoln, (yes, that Abraham Lincoln), but not tonight. Tonight, you close your eyes and let the light from the street lamps flicker across the closed lids. Tonight, you allow the headlights of passing cars to burn their fleeting insignificance onto your skin, here one second and gone the next, and you think of your empty apartment and the way it’ll be so much more in a few hours; you let yourself know the way he’ll hold you when you fall asleep.</p><p>Your thoughts sing quiet lullabies of stars and wood smoke and gentle hands against your own when no one else can see, and you float on the feeling and let his steady breathing next to you lull you into dreams neither of you will remember when you wake.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Technically a wood fire would almost certainly not have been hot enough to burn a body to ash, but I’m worried if I do more research on how to cremate a body the FBI will investigate me. Also, this goes without saying, but please do not start fires in the middle of the forest, especially if you aren’t in a designated area.<br/>Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Thank you for reading!</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28588260">Landmines On The Battlefield (Stay Alive)</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/forest_roses/pseuds/forest_roses">forest_roses</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
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